Comic Book Day: Pull List for July 9, 2014

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While the SDCC exclusive train may be firing up is engines and speeding headlong towards July 23rd with titles like Dark Horse’s Hellboy & The BPRD, a new Captain America on the way, and Lobo getting his own series this fall, it can be easy to forget that there’s a slew of brand new comics coming to store shelves today! Well, we’re here to remind you that there’s plenty of ways to spend your money before Comic-Con even starts. This week, we’re talking about Dick Grayson’s new solo book Grayson, Joshua Hale Fialkov’s mindbending new The Life After, and looking to the future with Spider-Man 2099.

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Cover by Andrew Robinson

Grayson #1 | DC Comics | Tim Seeley and Mikel Janin

When I first heard that Dick Grayson would be hanging up his spandex in order to pursue a life of black-ops espionage work, I was more than skeptical. The tagline “You might think you know Nightwing – but you don’t know Dick”, while clever, didn’t do much to assuage my fears. Being completely wrong has never felt so good because Grayson #1 was an absolute blast from start to finish, thanks to an exuberant, intense debut issue from writer Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash) and artist Mikel Janin (Justice League Dark). The new ongoing series, which finds Grayson working for Spyral, the shadowy international spy ring once run by original Batwoman Kathy Kane, hits the ground running, wasting no time in getting us on board with the high stakes espionage action.

Armed with an identity-concealing cybernetic implant (and years of crime-fighting experience), Dick, codenamed Agent 47, finds himself boarding a speeding train on the Trans-Siberian Railroad in order to extract a high value target. Of course, when it comes to the world of international espionage nothing is simple and soon Dick finds himself having to neutralize enemy spies, narrowly avoid being disintegrated, and a leather-clad maniac bent on taking him out. All in a day’s work for someone with Grayson’s particular set of skills. Seeley’s deft deployment of exposition and backstory through thrilling set pieces and slick pacing keeps the action moving nicely and makes this comic a strong first showing. Mikel Janin’s artwork, stylized, cinematic, and clean, makes the spy thriller well worth your time and a must-have for this week’s pull list. What really makes the comic shine though is their treatment of Dick Grayson, a character who shines when they highlight the ways in which he’s different than Batman. This isn’t just another superhero comic; it’s high-flying, unbridled fun with enough mystery peppered in to keep us coming back for more.

Dripping with a low-grade depression, The Life After sees its protagonist – nope, no name in the solicitation, that’s gotta mean something – dragging his life through monotonous day after monotonous day. Little does he know that unseen men in a control room somewhere direct and control every aspect of his purgatorial existence. It’s only through accidental contact with another poor soul on the bus that our hero is able to see that there are other worlds and other lives for the men and women trapped in his drab world, spanning space and time.

A 20-panel, two-page spread tells us everything we need to know about our protagonist: he’s trapped. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t have anyone or anything but a routine which seems to be the only thing he can remember about his life. Fialkov intersperses the lead’s unhappy narration with the work of the people engineering his life, so we know early on that something is “off” but we don’t know why anyone would want to mire this poor, sad sack in misery.

By the final pages, when our hero meets a late, lamented literary giant, Fialkov tips his hand a bit about where The Life After is coming from (without hinting at where it’s going). The best way to think of it isThe Adjustment Bureau for the terminally miserable, and thanks to Gabo’s artwork, it’s a sad, cramped world of routine that unexpectedly bursts with color and strangeness in its back half.

If you can get past some of the on-the-nose elements here (the lack of name for the protagonist, the fact that none of this has happened in 2,000 years), The Life After creates an intriguing, potentially gonzo mystery – frankly, I’m sticking around to see what other celebrity guest stars we get.

That Peter David, he’s like a magician. A magician whose power it is to make me care about concepts and characters I either didn’t care much about, or I just thought were flat out lame. In the “didn’t care about them” department, Mr. David has taken a bunch of C-list mutants over at X-Factor and given them real personalities and made some of them among my favorite mutants. In the “I just thought they were lame” category was Spider-Man 2099. Mostly I just thought Spider-Man 2099 was lame not because I read much of the book before, it’s just that the whole 2099 line seemed gimmicky and ’90s to me in the worst way. But after reading just this first issue, Peter David has me not only liking Miguel O’Hara, our titular hero, but anxious to read the next issue. How does he do it?

The first issue opens with a reintroduction of Spider-Man 2099 as a concept, which is helpful to me as I basically don’t know jack about our future Spidey besides that he’s from the year 2099 and has kinda/sorta Peter Parkery powers. Oh, I read the first couple of issues of the original Spider-Man 2099 back in the ’90s, but it was the ’90s so I don’t really remember much about them (there was Jerry Springer, Tonya Harding, OJ and Melrose Place I think. When I try to remember other things it hurts.) Basically, in about eighty years, Miguel O’Hara is a young scientist who works for this huge company called Alchemax, where he did experiments that resulted in his getting spider powers. The CEO of Alchemax in his time is Tyler Stone, who is Miguel’s father. Recently there was some kind of time distortion thingy that sent Miguel back to the earliest days of the company, which is the present day, while it is still be run by his grandfather, Tiberius Stone, and now he has to prevent Tiberius from being killed. It’s kind of a Terminator thing.

And just like those movies, there is an angry cyborg (or possibly just robot) also sent back to cause trouble and kill a bunch of people, including Spidey 2099 for breaking the laws of time travel . The scenes of a pissed off time traveling cyborg (or possibly robot) going around and decimating civilians (unless they have kids or grandkids who contribute to future society in some way; if you retire as an old cat lady, you’re toast) shouldn’t be so funny, but this being Peter David, they’re written kinda hilarious. So are the scenes of Miguel looking for a room to rent and navigating life in the present. Peter David just knows how to bring the funny to just about any situation, and he knows how to make a character likable, no matter how much I dislike said character going in (and yes, I’m aware Peter David created Spider-Man 2099 back in the day, which means he was probably always cool and I was just being stubborn about it.) We also find out this issue that future Spidey somehow gets entangled with original Spidey love interest Liz Allen, which is supposed to lead to all kinds of future drama.

I wish I could say the art was as good as the writing, but it was often just meh. Will Sliney’s pencils remind me too much of Greg Land, whose work drives me insane. I will say that Sliney is way better than Land, but his stuff retains some of his stiffness, which just is something I don’t like. But either his style grew on me over the course of the issue, or I just got used to it quick. And I don’t like that Miguel O’Hara looks so much like Peter Parker. I wish he was drawn to look a bit different, but ultimately these are quibbles and don’t distract from an overall fun of the story. I’m not sure if I’m in for the long haul for Spider-Man 2099, but for now, mostly thanks to Peter David, they got me looking forward to the next installment.